


Vampires Like New Friends

by VikiChylde



Category: Original Work
Genre: F/M, Original work - Freeform, Vampires, i miss being lost in the streets of new york, too much poetry and not enough wine
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-01-13
Updated: 2020-01-13
Packaged: 2021-02-27 07:41:19
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 1,653
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22243504
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/VikiChylde/pseuds/VikiChylde
Summary: A girl gets kidnapped by vampires that look like children that look like vampires. How avant-garde.
Relationships: Original Character(s)/Original Character(s)





	1. Chapter 1

They sat in a circle like miniature druids, black hoods, drawstrings and zippers. Playing cards, Bicycle-backed, flew into their center. The repetitions were unremarkable. Poker? Fingers filed between fours and fives, while kings and queens waited in the wings.

"Why did we bring her here?" said Finn, fifteen and pale-faced. Freckles danced along the bridge of his nose and wove undereye, smokey grey. He had pink lips, the color of rosebuds, and frail yellow hair.

"I told you," said Raze, the youngest one, as he retrieved a card from the pile and filtered it into his hand. "Oriel wanted to wake Didier. He's been in his room for.. forever." Black hair, blue, red, and green hung over his eyes. They were brown, like the tobacco stains on his fingers, like the birthmark under his left ear.

"He stares at the ceiling all night and recites poetry," said the third and final boy. A scowl rode the tail end of try, and he stood upright, folded, and turned to face the television set. Men on rooftops shooting over cross streets. The living dead and a shopping mall. Ly lowered his hood and stepped forward, as if drawn to the light. At eighteen, he was the eldest, but there were others who had lingered for longer. Where were they now? Ly tried briefly to remember, closed each olive eye, but found himself in midsummer, staring at a seashore he knew he never visited.

Luxury was rolled out around them. Italian leather, Persian silk, tapestries embroidered with gold. It was an old world castle chamber with new age additions. An eight-foot high entertainment system loomed above them and offered every electric pleasure the teenaged senses could want for. The ceiling was set two feet higher. Spherical carvings ran from its four corners to trim each oversized window.

Someone had closed the curtains. It was early evening.

"Where is the offense?" A voice broke through the theatrical hum of horror characters and altered the boys to their feet. It belonged to a youth of like-age, somewhere median of the other three, but unlike them in any other aspect. He wore a riding hat over his hair, black as his snakeskin shoes, as his small leather gloves, black as the downy fur of the hare-trimmed coat he wore across his shoulders. Like a cape. His eyes and face: two little emeralds cut out of the arctic ice.

"There is none."  
"None."  
"None at all."

The youth smiled and offered them his open arms. Raze was first, followed by Finn. Ly waited with patience, not hesitance, and approached the newcomer with a shy smile.

"Goodnight, Oriel."

"Good evening," Raze corrected, as Ly stumbled over his English.

Oriel's laughter was something short-lived, whisper soft, and nearly missed. But the children were well practiced after years of companionship, or months, in Raze's case.

"Let us leave this place tonight. The house does not require your noise, as much as I adore it."

"And your brother?" Finn pipped. Raze, clearly the brighter acolyte, stared at his shoes. Ly stood in the backdrop, unchanged.

"Let him, and the house, alone with our guest."

After the house was hollowed, the quiet was short-lived.


	2. Chapter 2

It has been a month since our brother has committed himself to the ground. He was the youngest of us, nearly newborn, but he beheld the burden of our years before his small shoulders could bear the reality. Years we spent contemplating our purpose, a trio of shadows, sifting through lives like so many grains of sand. We were beyond them, I promised, when we were at peace with our nature. Seeds of the same carnal tree.

'But I am a vine,' he told me. 'Climbing so many fat green circles, unable to detach myself from one or the other.'

I shook him, I think. He would never listen otherwise. 'But you must, or you will die.'

Death not quite. It was Oriel who found his letter, with direct instructions not to interfere, to search for him, for we would find nothing. Naturally I ignored the note and hired several private detectives to delve through the paper trail. Notebooks, credit card bills, computer files, you name it, I had it. But it seemed our little brother lead me on a wild goose chase. Clues in poetry scribbled in margins lead me to Italy, but high and dry. Historical purchases left me in circles and stranded in New England. So much earth to turn for such a small body. For all I knew, he crawled into the brush of our own garden.

I dream of him often, and wake with the sensation of a second skin, a sediment that has settled, shaped to my form, and hardened.

In the last days, just before his retirement, he covered the walls of his room with references to star-crossed lovers. I recognized the Shakespeare, but not much of pop culture. He often threw dialogue in a diagonal, angst and longing in so many scribbled quotes.

'I am like these,' he said to me, wild-eyed with paint on his hands, in his fingernails, smeared on his face, 'forbidden from the one thing that would complete me.'

I asked him what, but he wouldn't answer, and Oriel said to let him alone.

And now I dream of him only, and recite the words on his walls, looking for answers that only a ghost can offer. The boys came and went, Oriel's chosen, tying me to the world at Oriel's command. I was careless with them, especially the eldest. In my grief, in my ravishing of them, I gave back what he'd taken. The small miseries, paths that lead them to this place, the faces of those who came before.

He was angry, I know he was angry, and for two days straight I had no visitors at all.

Fine, that was fine. I laughed myself to sleep. I woke and began anew, line after line, talking at the air. I was beginning to believe my recitation took shape. I saw constellations in particles of dust.

I was slowly losing my mind.

That is when I met her, on the brink of insanity. My chamber door, blown wide by Raze. My body heaved upright by one of the other two.

'Brother,' said the small silhouette in the doorframe, 'Come. Make yourself presentable. There is someone I must introduce you to.'


	3. Chapter 3

She does not sleep, but lies very very still. The bedroom is not her bedroom.

Illumination. Warm colors rushing into motion.

She does not see, does not open her eyes, but the colors dance above her eyelids, as if she has opened them for just one moment, as if she has allowed the light back in.

No. No light for her. Not forever and ever. He spoke to her with sweetness, but wrapped around his words were bright warnings. Something in him repulsed something in her.

But this was stupid. What was he? Fifteen? A boy. Too young for her affections, nevermind her attention.

She does not remember, and she does.

Between the lava-labra, the disco lights, amidst the spinning crowd, he stood as if waiting for her, his hand held out in offering.

Dance with me. Simple. Little gentleman. Did not belong standing there. Bodies seven years his senior rotating around and around.

She wanted to save him, but they were already kissing. Mouth to cheek, to hand, to throat. She was talking in her head. He was responding in her ear. No, she said. Wait, she said.

She does not recall stepping into the limousine, but does remember the others. So young, their faces. Even the Filipino, tall and stark as he was. She laughed aloud and said "the lost boys!" and they cackled all the way down Canal Street.

Downtown? No. She was uptown before. But now the air stunk of Chinese fish markets and the 4 am flushing of the perpetual drunks.

Someone asked her name. Someone quickly said, "Shut up!"

"Elizabeth," said the little gentleman, who had eyes like great green marbles. Cat eyes. Broken diameter. Had to be contact lenses.

"Call me Eli," she had said, to the boy who was definitely a dream. Her cheek felt the smooth surface of leather, felt the heat within, pumped via a mythological engine to keep out the January air.

The dream had his arm around her shoulders, with one hand on her forearm, mindful of the lace. Black dress. White lace. Her feet were cold. Where were her shoes? Oh, but they had lifted her into the car...

And now she does not sleep in a room that is not her own, and does not open her eyes because that would make it real. She has wished herself out and away before, wished for true things and they happen. Perhaps now, if she rejects the word reality for a moment, if she rejects what has befallen her, she can shape her world anew.

Like the man in that book who refuses to die. And Death says, "Okay. Sure. Let's see how long you can keep this up." You know, like that!

The Filipino is at the door. She knows it is him because of his walk - no heel, no ball, just a cool slide of sole. She knows the others too: one has rhythm, one is diffuse, and one she can't hear at all.

"Elizabeth," he says through the lock. The heat of his breath on bare metal. She can almost feel these things. Why?

"Eli, Oriel says to sleep. He can hear you through the ceiling."

She laughs at this. There is a twitch of doorknob. A sigh.

"All will be well. He will be here in fifty minutes."

A pause.

"Your things have been brought to the room. All of your things. Please find something suitable to wear."

She opens her eyes.

The bedroom is her bedroom. Exactly. And not at all.


End file.
